Photo By: Rachel CavanaughNORCOM 911
Cassy Jeffries (sitting), a communications specialist with NORCOM 911 and Gina Audritsh, director of NORCOM 911, look at the Everbridge System online, which runs the alert system.
WOODBURN — Local police dispatchers have launched a program to send emergency alerts to home phones, business lines and to cell phones via voice and text messages.
Alerts will include serious weather situations, water system contaminants, fires, school lockdowns and suspicious packages, among other emergencies. It will be run by North Marion County Communications Center (NORCOM 911).
Dispatchers will be able to focus on specific areas and send out alerts only to those affected in that region.
The $34,000 project, funded and administered through NORCOM 911, has been in the works since last year.
“(It’s) just the importance of being able to reach a large number of people in the community to deliver important information all at one time, rather than having people in here making phone calls,” said NORCOM 911 director Gina Audritsh. “It’s part of the emergency operations plan and we’ve just never been able to fund something in our community until recently.”
In addition to landlines and cells, the alerts can be received through Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) phones, home and professional e-mails and alpha pagers.
Landline phones will be automatically included. Cell phones, VoIP phones, e-mails and pagers will be voluntary.
People can choose up to five different locations to receive alerts.
Business owners can be notified of emergencies that may impact where their business is located, even if they don’t live in the community.
Additionally, NORCOM 911 will be partnering with places like libraries, public works departments and other institutions to offer non-emergency alerts. Those interested in receiving them can sign up for whichever agency alerts they want.
The alerts will be computerized messages. Audritsh said they will send out quarterly test alerts to remind people of the process.
“We don’t want to inundate the public with nonessential messages but we also want them to be used to receiving messages (so) in the event that they are going to get a phone call, that they don’t just hang up on it,” she said.
The program, which went into effect Thursday, will cover NORCOM 911’s user service agency, including Aurora, Hubbard, Woodburn, and Gervais, among others.
“It was a priority for NORCOM 911 to identify a system that would provide community alerts of benefit to the community that are not necessarily emergent in nature,” said Audritsh. “These would be community alerts that provide resource information such as road closures, crime bulletins, fire safety bulletins, health bulletins, public utility bulletins and volunteer opportunities.
“Because we serve a diverse community it was important … to also purchase a notification system that would provide citizens with the opportunity to request notifications be delivered in Spanish and/or Russian language in addition to English.
We want the community to be comfortable with receiving communication and emergency instructions from the Everbridge System.”
People can sign up for notifications at www.norcom911.org by clicking the icon on the right that says, “Citizen Alert Notification Sign Up.”
